For "Abomination Release Day", I popped in the AVCHD's of Harmy's Despecialized Edition. Free of charge, no money to Lucas, and more care went into them than the Blu-rays. I'll just get the bonuses off the Internet.

I guess I don't have to ask if the the otheR Site's forums are still down......

If it hadn't been for the fact that Target put the only two copies of the Complete Saga they had in those oversized boxes instead of the Iron Man chest reactor thing with wires, I wouldn't have gotten it there either. When the last two Harry Potter Ultimate Edition BRs came out, I made the Target electronics woman go into the back storeroom to get me two non-reactorfied boxes, as the ones on the shelf had huge divots dug into them on each of the four edges. I also don't buy any BRs with those cardboard outer sleeves at Target, as the security boxes are too small for them and Target just crams them in and/or pulls them out indiscriminately, ripping the sleeve in the process. If I'm going to pay for something, I'd prefer it not to be damaged before it even gets in my hands.

Ya I'm pretty anal when it comes to packaging and the 1st set I did buy had the "iron man chest reactor" thing going on and it bugged the **** out of me all day so I stopped by another Target on the way home like Jeff mentioned they had a big display cap deal at the front by the registers so I now have a minty fresh set.

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I haven't bought the complete saga yet. Simply because I don't have a flatscreen or a Blu Ray player at this time. So there's really no hurry. Thanks to The You Tube I've been able to check out most, if not all, of the deleted scenes. There's some pretty good stuff, too. I haven't gotten a chance to see "The Lost Rebels" scenes yet, but no doubt that's going to pop up soon enough. I also want to see the Droid Control Ship sequence from AOTC to see if there's anything that's changed from the AOTC DVD, but I haven't seen that yet either.

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I went through the OT deleted scenes and interviews last night- I enjoyed it for what it was. We didn't have a BR player yet, so I took advantage of the Best Buy deal- buy any BR player $100 and up, and get $20 off the set. That made it 59.99, and I split it with my brother in law, so for $30 we get to share the set. I started up TPM at first, and was blown away by the clarity and sound. I am actually looking forward to watching all 6 movies this way, even though I will cringe every now and then. Someday he or his kids will put out the unedited versions in whatever format is the best at the time, and I will get those then as well. I do understand people who don't want to see the new versions though. I refused to see "Walk the line" because absolutely nobody should be Johnny Cash in my head except for Johnny Cash. While I think the OT could have used some technological tweaking (some SE scenes, particularly Yavin space sequence pop to mind), it didn't need to be altered as much as it was. A few clean ups, a few more ships, that would have been just fine for me.

Okay, so I just finished watching Star Wars (or "A New Hope" as you young'uns like to call it), and wanted to give some quick thoughts and clarifications:

-The music has been restored to its original glory! No more mixed channels, no more "deliberate creative decisions", and the fanfare as the X-Wings descend on the Death Star is BACK! Great news for film music fans, John Williams fans, and fans of Ben Burtt having the reins pulled in on his ego a bit.

-SW is always going to look a little out of place among the other five films (given the technical limitations of the time and film stock used), but this is probably the best it has ever looked. Aside from a few minor issues (Luke still has a white lightsaber at two points on the MF, although he thankfully no longer has a green one in that same scene), the whole film looks like it's been color corrected from top to bottom, and it just looks amazing.

-The only obvious visual/auditory changes I noticed (aside from the aforementioned music correction/reinstatement) were R2's hidey-rocks (which seem to come and go depending on the angle) and Obi-Wan's Long-Duk-Dong-esque "Hello sexy Tusken!" wail, which is even more ridiculous than it sounded online. Same noise, just hearing it in 6.1 DTS surround makes it even more fabulous!

-Sadly, the changes I would have liked to have seen (new holograms of the Death Star plans, R2 having blue panels in the space scenes at all times, the headstones at the Lars Homestead) weren't there. Something for the eventual "Ultimate We Swear We're Done Milking This" box set of holograms and live performances somewhere down the line, I guess.

I still plan on watching ESB and ROTJ later tonight, so I'll check back in with further thoughts later.

Oh, and before I forget again, the subtitles (for example, when Greedo or Sebulba are speaking Huttese, or when Poggle is speaking Geonosian in their respective films) are the original font and are part of the print itself, not player generated. Meaning, for the first time on DVD/BR, we're seeing the subtitles as they were originally included theatrically. I find that very cool, personally.

Okay, so the two day film marathon is now officially over, after having watched Empire and Jedi back to back earlier this evening. As promised, here are my thoughts on the final two films as they are presented on BR:

-Empire looks and sounds AMAZING. The sound during the Battle of Hoth is so full and immersive that it's almost like a totally new film. And, mercifully, Empire is the one film of the six included in the set that has the absolute least done to it. As in, "If I didn't know ahead of time that they'd fixed the Wampa puppeteer arm thing, I'd think they didn't do anything at all." There is nothing noticeable in terms of alterations in Empire (that hasn't been in previous alterations; the new Wampa, Palpatine hologram, and silly "Alert my Star Destroyer" shuttle montage are still included).

-On the other hand, Jedi comes across as the film that LFL totally half-assed in this set. The picture quality (and this may just be my perspective) is lower than any of the other five films in the set, and vacillates between pristine to cloudy. It's almost like LFL made it through the restoration and upgrades on SW and ESB only to say, "That ****'ll do" on Jedi. Disappointing.

-And, again, as the opposite of Empire's BR presentation, Jedi has the most alterations but, again, several of them seem really half-assed. Everyone knows what most of them are already, but here's a rundown for those who missed them:

1. Jabba's got a big(ger) ass door now. The problem is that while it's big on the outside, it's the exact same size as before when the shot is looking out (as it does when Threepio and Artoo enter, and when Luke enters).

2. A randomly wandering Dug apparently had to go to the bathroom while everyone else was asleep just before Luke walks down the stairs into the throne room. I actually would have been okay with this had the Dug actually stuck around in the background, but it's literally him walking across the screen and then you never see him again.

3. The famous Ewok blinks. The photos we've seen are all of Wicket, and for good reason, since (outside of a single shot of a Wokling blinking) he's the only Ewok that blinks. Yes, tons of close-ups of Teebo, Paploo, even Wompus, and none of them blink at all. But Wicket does. Now, when Wicket (and Wokling) blink, it's done so well that you'd think it had been there since 1983; the problem is that (from my viewpoint) if you're going to make an Ewok blink, make ALL the Ewoks blink.

4. Darth Vader says "Nooo. NOOOOOOOOOO!" prior to throwing Palpy down the reactor shaft, true, but in what is either a giant step forward in picture quality or another alteration that hasn't gotten much publicity due to the "DO NOT WANT" utterance, Vader's skull is MUCH more visible and defined during his electrocution than I recall it in earlier versions.

5. Little things that I had hoped would be fixed (Fett's flopped rangefinder, Lando's flopped holster) remain as they have always been: obvious and annoying.

6. In the pinnacle of half-assedness, the much ballyhooed improvements to the lightsaber color corrections are totally random on Jedi, with Vader still having a pink saber with no white core in many shots. It's like LFL saw people complain about the "crossed sabers" shot and corrected that, plus another few here and there, and said, "**** it, don't we have an episode of Clone Wars about poisoned school soda to work on?"

Will be cracking into the prequel bonus features tomorrow, although I did watch the Grievous/Obi-Wan chase animatic that Spielberg assembled/directed. Really wish that was how it played in the film, as it was, to be quite blunt, pretty ******* awesome.